UPPER MERION — It’s not every day you get to shake the hand of the king of King of Prussia.

Arthur L. Powell, the man whose vision launched The Plaza at King of Prussia half a century ago, was honored by Rotary International Wednesday at the Kravco Co. offices across the road from the still evolving mall megalopolis he built.

Powell, a past president of the King of Prussia Rotary Club, received a medallion, lapel pin and engraved plaque in recognition of his life-long support of the Rotary’s charitable arm, the Gundaker Foundation.

“Art Powell is basically the soul of King of Prussia,” said the foundation’s director, Ernest Ziotolow, moments before the presentation. “He’s a legendary figure. Without the mall and his creation of the mall, King of Prussia would have been quite a different sleepy town.”

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King of Prussia was first nudged from its slumber when Powell’s new era of modern shopping debuted with discount department store E.J. Korvette — roughly where the lower level of Sears is now located — in September 1962.

J.C. Penney came along two months later, and Kravco’s architectural vision of an open-air mall was off and running by the summer of ’63 with the arrival of Acme supermarket, and the high-end John Wanamaker store in 1965.

The iconic octagon-shaped Wanamaker building — which seemed to have been plucked from the imagination of Frank Lloyd Wright — was demolished in July 2011 to make way for a string of individual retailers.

Today, J.C. Penney, which went through a multimillion dollar makeover the same year, is the last surviving musketeer from the original big three department stores that gave birth to The Plaza.

“Among Kravco’s achievements, I am most proud of the world-renowned King of Prussia Mall,” Powell wrote in his 2011 book, “Kravco: the Making of an American Business.”

At 92, Powell is still active in Kravco, the family-run real estate and property management business founded in the late 1940s by Powell and his partner Harold G. Schaeffer.

Powell’s son Richard, director of Kravco Co. LLC, said his father’s expertise is regularly called upon during developmental meetings at the King of Prussia headquarters.

“He really knows every little sinkhole and pipe when it comes to these properties,” Richard said. “He was the one in charge of getting everything built.”

In 2003, Kravco sold a majority interest of the company to Indianapolis developer Simon Property Group, under a limited partnership that gave Simon half ownership of Kravco’s affiliated property management organization and a majority ownership in King of Prussia Mall; Montgomery Mall in Montgomeryville; Oxford Valley Mall in Langhorne; Whitehall Mall in Whitehall and Quaker Bridge Mall in Princeton.

Following the strategic partnership with Simon Property Group from 2003 to 2011, Arthur Powell and his son Jon launched Kravco Co. LLC.

“Simon bought into some of the properties when one of the partners wanted to sell their interest,” explained Richard Powell. “The Powell family stayed involved, where everybody else was bought out. It was a 10 year deal, and two years ago Simon bought Kravco out of the management company. We got our name back, we maintained four or five of the top executives, and we’re trying to rebuild our company.”

Kravco maintains a small ownership in King of Prussia Mall but not in its management, Richard Powell said.

At the end of his book, Arthur Powell reflected on the future of the industry he virtually invented:

“Every 10 years there is something new in the retail industry. What will regional malls look like in 10 years? At Kravco, we can now list our collective talents to include developer, master developer, owner financier, operator, property manager, lessee, construction supervisor, marketer and asset manager.

“The industry grew up,” he added, “and my partners and I grew up with it.”